


Good To Be Alive

by chamel



Series: Hanging On For Dear Life: Songs of Cara Dune & Din Djarin [8]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, Did I mention there's going to be Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Mandalorian Culture, Near Death Experiences, Trust Issues, deathbed confessions, it'll be ok in the end I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:48:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25940887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamel/pseuds/chamel
Summary: That’s it, then. He knew, deep down, that this day would come; it does for many Mandalorians, eventually. For people like him, people who put themselves into that much danger, it’s almost inevitable, whether unmasked by an enemy or by someone just trying to help. That knowledge doesn’t make it any easier to bear. He stares at the helmet and it seems to stare back at him, a visible representation of his ruination.(Din almost dies, but when he wakes up he finds that the price of his life was not one he was willing to pay.)
Relationships: Cara Dune & Paz Vizsla, Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Din Djarin & Paz Vizsla
Series: Hanging On For Dear Life: Songs of Cara Dune & Din Djarin [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1781008
Comments: 71
Kudos: 174





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I totally did not intend this story to go this way when I started writing it. I thought it would be short, I thought it would be lighthearted in the second half, I thought it would be straightforward hurt/comfort. But then once I got the idea I couldn't not write it, even though it pretty painful. I'm sorry.

_And I've been searching for that hunger_  
_That I knew when I was younger_  
_And I was never satisfied_  
_Now my body's getting older_  
_But my brain is aging slower_  
_And I still feel young inside_  
_Oh, it's good to be alive_

It’s more peaceful than he expected it would be.

Dying.

This time, at least. Not like on Nevarro. Then, his mouth had been full of the bitter bile of failure, of the knowledge that despite his best efforts he’d managed nothing more than delaying the inevitable.

Of course, he hadn’t actually died then. IG-11 had saved his life.

Maybe that’s the difference.

This time, there would be no coming back. But this time, he hadn’t failed. Gideon was finally dead. The kid would be safe with the Jedi. He’d have a better life than Din could ever give him. Din had served whatever special purpose the universe had for him.

His life is unnecessary now.

“Shut _up! Shut up shut up!_ ” someone says vehemently from his side.

Din blinks slowly, turning his head with a great effort toward the voice. Had he been speaking out loud? Around him the world seems shrouded by fog, muffling sounds and obscuring his vision. What he can see is refracted as if through a prism, and with a blink of surprise he realizes the transparisteel of his visor is cracked. The heads-up display inside his helmet flickers off and on erratically. He lifts one hand to try to turn it off on his vambrace control panel, but someone grabs his arm and holds him down.

“Stop moving,” the voice commands.

It’s warped, coming through the damaged speaker inside the helmet, and he can’t quite place it. Whoever it is sounds angry. Angry and distraught. He wants to tell them that it will be all right. That they should let him go.

“Kriff you, asshole,” the voice snarls. “I will not. Not this time. _I will not, do you hear me?_ ”

Suddenly, something presses hard over the wound on the side of his chest, just beyond the edge of his breastplate. It sends a white hot spike of excruciating pain through his chest and up to his head, exploding behind his eyes. For a moment he thinks he’ll pass out from the pain, or maybe just go ahead and die, but he’s not so lucky. He gasps his eyes open again and finds some of the fog has cleared.

She’s kneeling next to him, gloves pulled off, hands bright red with his blood. He has an unpleasant sense of deja vu, of that time on Nevarro. This time, there are no droids with unexpected bacta reserves to save him, though.

“Cara,” he croaks. The raggedness of his own voice shocks him, but maybe it’s just the broken modulator. He coughs wetly and grimaces at the metallic taste of copper on his tongue.

“Shhhh,” she says. “Stop talking. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

He doesn’t know who _we_ is in this situation. As far as he knows, it’s just Cara and him here now. And soon it will only be Cara.

“Cara, please,” he tries again. He needs to say this. Needs to tell her.  
  
Cara makes a sound that is somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Shut the kriff up, you stubborn idiot. You can tell me later.”

“I’m not going to make it, and you know it,” he manages. He can feel his consciousness beginning to ebb away again, wants to embrace the dark like he never has before.

“Hey, stay with me,” she says frantically, pressing on his wound again. He can’t see it, but he can imagine the thick, dark blood pouring out between her fingers. “Don’t you kriffing dare. I’m gonna kill you if you die.”

He laughs at that, but it quickly dissolves into wracking, bloody coughs. “I’m sorry, Cara,” he croaks when they dissapate. “I should have been stronger.”

“What the kriff are you talking about?” she sobs.

With a start, he realizes that there are tears streaking down through the blood and soot on her face, collecting on her chin and the tip of her nose to catch the light like crystals. He manages to raise his hand to her face, smearing through the moisture with a gloved thumb.

“I love you, Cara.”

He doesn’t really understand the way her face crumples at that. Maybe it was the wrong thing to say. Soon enough it won’t really matter, though. She should know, before it’s too late.

“Now I know you’ve got a brain injury,” she tries to joke, but she looks absolutely miserable. One of her hands raises to the cheek of his helmet, smearing his blood across it as she trembles. “You can’t leave me, you hear? I don’t give you permission to leave.”

“Ok,” he says, letting his eyelids flutter shut.

He’s so tired. So, so tired.

* * *

The room where he wakes up is so white that he can’t believe it’s real. The light filtering through the gauzy curtains is soft, dream-like, and reveals little except for bare walls and a white curtain separating him from whatever is beyond. Briefly, he considers that he is dead and this is some kind of afterlife, but the dull aching pain in his side says otherwise. He takes an experimental deep breath and sends himself into a coughing fit that wracks his chest painfully. It brings up pink-tinged sputnum in his palm, which he looks at curiously for a minute before he realizes what’s wrong.

He’s not wearing his helmet.

A sudden, blinding panic grips him, squeezing the air out of his already ruined lungs. He swings his feet over the side of the bed, wincing against the pain, and tries to push himself to standing. It doesn’t go so well. Almost immediately he can feel his legs collapsing beneath him but before he hits the ground strong arms wrap around under his arms, careful to avoid putting too much pressure on his chest.

“Hey, hey, what are you doing?” Cara chides softly as she maneuvers him back onto the bed.

He wants to protest, to struggle out of her grasp, but he completely lacks the strength to do so. Instead, he collapses back against the pillows, his breath ragged in his throat, and squeezes his eyes shut against the pain. When he opens them again he is perplexed to find that Cara is gone. Had he imagined her? But then she reappears, eyes cast carefully down at the ground, carrying a syringe. Silently, she inserts it into the port on the IV line connected to his arm and injects the contents. It’s only a few moments before he can feel the numbing rush of the painkiller in his veins. He can tell he won’t be awake for long, but he has to know.

“Cara, where is my helmet?”

She hesitates for a moment, but just a moment. “Your armor is here.”

He notices at once that it’s not a direct answer to the question. But she pulls back a corner of the curtain to show his armor in a neat pile on a table. His helmet is balanced carefully on top of it, and its appearance shocks him. The rest of the armor has been cleaned, but not the helmet: bloody handprints still cover it, interrupting the black residue of explosions and blaster fire, and a web of cracks has completely ruined the transparisteel of the visor.

“I didn’t want to do anything that might damage it further,” Cara says quietly. “There aren’t any Mandalorians nearby.”

His mouth works soundlessly for a few moments as he tries to draw up the courage to ask what he needs to know. The question he already knows the answer to. His face is clean, he’s felt the bandages on his cheek and nose.

“Cara,” he manages, raising a hand to his face, “who did this? Did someone see my face?”

She flinches, and it’s all the answer he needs. At first he thinks she’s not going to answer, but then she takes a deep breath, eyes still trained on the ground. “You were drowning in your own blood,” she tells him, voice wavering. “There was no other way.”

That’s it, then. He knew, deep down, that this day would come; it does for many Mandalorians, eventually. For people like him, people who put themselves into that much danger, it’s almost inevitable, whether unmasked by an enemy or by someone just trying to help. That knowledge doesn’t make it any easier to bear. He stares at the helmet and it seems to stare back at him, a visible representation of his ruination.

“Who?” he demands, surprised by the strength in his own voice. Cara flinches again, but says nothing. “Cara, who saw my face?”

“Does it matter?” she whispers.

He lets his hands bunch up the sheets on the bed, frustrated at his own invalidity. “I deserve to know.”

Cara chews her lower lip, staring fixedly at the floor, and he can see unshed tears glittering in her eyes. In a flash, he remembers her sobbing over his ruined body, remembers what happened that day before he lost consciousness. He shoves it back down, determined to ignore the emotions it dredges up in him.

“Just me,” she murmurs. “I made the medics let me do anything that had to be done with your head.”

In some ways, it’s almost worse than a stranger. A stranger he could let himself forgive. A stranger wouldn’t know better. Not this person he trusted so much. This person he lo… No. He can’t let himself think like that.

“Why are you bothering to avert your eyes?” he asks coldly. “Did you plan on keeping it from me?”

Her eyes flash as she looks up at him finally, and the feeling of her looking so openly at his face sends a shiver down his spine. Occasionally he had let himself imagine doing this, what it might feel like to show himself to her. He never thought it would be like this.

“No,” she shoots back. Her voice is still wavering with emotion, but it has a hard edge to it now. “I would never lie to you.”

“But you would disregard my Way.”  
  
She clenches her jaw and he can see the anger flowing into her features. Good. Anger he can deal with. Anger he can reflect back. Anger can keep his mind off the terrible emotions swirling around deep inside him.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“You always had a choice,” Din growls. “You should have let me die.”

Cara scoffs at that, rolling her eyes like he’d just suggested she let him beat her at sparring. “Oh, kriff that," she spits, her voice low and dangerous. "I did that once, Din. If you think I could do it again, that there was any part of me that could allow you to die, then you don’t know me at all. You want to hate me for it? Hate me. I don’t care. You’re alive, and I refuse to regret what I did. I’d do it again.”

It’s him that breaks eye contact then. The intensity of her gaze is too much, too overwhelming. He stares down at his clenched fists, knuckles going as white as the sheets, and clings desperately to his anger. It’s the only thing preventing him from falling apart right now, the only thing that feels like a raft in the storm of his feelings.

“Leave,” he manages to whisper, still avoiding her gaze. “Please. I need to be alone.”

He hears her footsteps echoing out of the room and suddenly feels more alone than he ever has before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so, there's that. It feels weird to say I hope you enjoyed this chapter, but thanks for reading. It's a bit short, but honestly I need to take a bit of a break after writing it? I know most of your comments will just be crying emojis, but I'll take it.
> 
> In other news, I'm working on an AU/crossover that like three people might want to read but I can't stop writing. I want to get a bunch of it down before I start posting chapters, though, so it will be a while. I'll work on this one at least for sure, but it might be a bit quieter from me for a few weeks unless sudden inspiration strikes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know a bunch of you were hoping for fluff in this chapter, and I'm sorry this doesn't really deliver. It's not completely heartwrenching angst, though, so it's something? A lot of introspection and an important conversation happen in this chapter.

When he asked Cara to leave he hadn’t meant _permanently_ , but that seems to be how she took it. It’s been days since he woke up in the small medical facility, and he’s seen no sign that she’s even on the planet anymore. When he asks the staff, they give him evasive replies that contain no actual answers, which makes him think she doesn’t want him to know where she’s gone.

It hurts more than he ever thought possible, and he’d been pretty sure for a while now that Cara leaving would break him.

The worst part of it is that he can’t blame her. He’s still bedridden with nothing to occupy him, so he’s replayed their last conversation in his head a thousand times, wishing futilily that he could imagine some other outcome. He’d been shocked and upset—still is, actually—and he took it out on the person that seemed to be the author of his pain. Occasionally he imagines what might have happened had Cara not been there, had someone else found him and tried to save his life. He wonders if he would feel so devastated and sometimes decides it would be worse, which is the opposite of what his initial reaction had been.

And that’s the kicker, isn’t it? Deep down, he’s not upset that it was _Cara_ who saw his face. When this thought manages to fight its way to the surface of his consciousness, it fills him with an abject and boundless shame. He should be furious, he should be horrified, but when it comes down to it he can’t hang onto those emotions, the ones that had been shocked out of him the day he woke up. It is this, more than anything, that makes him feel so utterly unworthy of his former creed.

So he wallows in his endless shame and guilt and misery at having driven away one of the two people he loves most in the universe. Sometimes the doctors scold him for this, saying that it’s only hindering his recovery, but he can’t bring himself to care. It’s barely worth healing, he thinks. For what? A life of exile from the closest thing to a family he had left? A lonely existence forever reminding him of what he lost?

The only thing that keeps him going is the kid. It’s not that he’s worried, really, although Din’s always worried about him, if he’s honest with himself. But he’d promised the kid that he’d visit often, that when Din left him with the Jedi that it wasn’t goodbye but merely see-you-later. One might argue that the kid couldn’t understand that oath, but Din knew he had. He could see it in the kid’s eyes.

It is an oath he has no intention of breaking.

“Mando?” a soft voice says from the other side of his curtain, interrupting the current moment’s whirlpool of doom and self-pity in his head.

One of the nurses, he thinks. He sighs wearily. “Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry,” the girl says. She sounds young, or at least not beaten down by the horrors of this galaxy, which is saying something for someone who works in a trauma ward. “She told us to call you that. Said your real name was private.”

Din just stops a bitter laugh from bursting out of his lips. He’d spent so many years jealously guarding his name, and for what? Who was he, anymore? Not anyone who could go by ‘Mando’, at any rate. “Just call me Din.”

“Ok, Din,” she says tentatively. “I need to come draw some blood. Is that ok?”

He doesn’t know what Cara told the staff in the facility, but every one of them treats him with a kind of wary reverence. They keep their eyes studiously downcast, even though he refuses to wear his helmet—it’s not his anymore, anyway—so he’s sure no one else has seen his face. Sometimes he wants to yell and scream and force them to look upon him, but in the end, every time, he’s too afraid.

He hates that deep down he takes comfort in the fact that it is only Cara who has seen him.

“Yeah, fine,” he mutters eventually when he realizes he’s left her waiting for an answer while he lets his thoughts spiral out of control.

The nurse peels back the curtain slowly, eyes carefully trained to the floor as he knew they would be. As she approaches they move to his blanket-covered feet and up his body until they find his arm, going no further. It only takes her a few minutes to find his vein and draw the required blood, but it’s the most human contact he’s had all day. This, too, is his fault; he firmly rebuffs all the counsellors who they send to try talk with him. None of them have any inkling of what he’s going through, so what’s the point.

“Has she been back?” he hears himself ask, wincing as he does. Well, he always was somewhat of a masochist, now more than ever.

The nurse doesn’t have to ask who he means. “No,” she says simply. “Sorry.”

Din is momentarily refreshed by her honesty. “If— if you see her, or hear from her, can you tell her I’d like to talk?”

She stares at the ground for a long moment, and he thinks she’s going to refuse, but then, miraculously, she says, “She won’t like it, but I will.”

“Thank you,” he replies, his voice thick. It’s more than he’s gotten from them about anything regarding Cara the entire time he’s been here. He hopes that, if the girl does deliver his message, Cara won’t be too angry at the disregard of whatever promise she’s wrung out of them.

The nurse bobs her head and turns to go, disappearing behind the curtain and pulling it closed behind her. But then she pauses again before she leaves, and Din can tell by the volume of her voice that she’s still facing away from him when she speaks.

“For what it’s worth, I think she’s really worried about you,” the girl says quietly. Her footsteps inform him that she’s left before he can even think of a reply to that.

Well. If Cara was going to be angry before, surely she’d be livid at this slip. Of course, Din will never tell her, even if he’s lucky enough to see her again. Which is far from a given.

He’s not entirely sure how this information makes him feel, anyway. Being _worried_ could mean a lot of things. It does seem to imply that she still cares about him, though.

Which. It’s certainly something. He doesn’t want to let it get his hopes up, but he can feel the knowledge burrowing its way into his chest, pressing relentlessly on his lungs and making it difficult to breathe. If nothing else, he’ll have something new to agonize over in the coming days. Variety is the spice of life, he thinks, somewhat deliriously.

* * *

It’s late afternoon and the sun slanting into the window casts a warm glow across the bed when he hears heavy footsteps enter the room. Whoever it is doesn’t pause at the door and knock, but they also don’t pull the curtain back. Instead, they wait silently on the other side for long enought that Din wonders if they’re going to actually say anything or just lurk there.

“You in there, Djarin?” a familiar voice asks eventually. Din would know it anywhere.

“Paz?” he croaks out in disbelief.

Of all the people to show up during his convalescence, Paz Vizsla would have been the absolute last he’d have expected. There are too many questions swirling around in his mind and he can hardly pick one to start with, but it seems Paz is waiting for him to do just that. He latches onto the obvious one.

“Why are you here?”

“Your woman found me,” Paz grumbles. “I don’t know how she did, seeing as how even your sorry ass couldn’t, but she did. Told me to come.”

Din can hardly figure out how to respond to all of that, so he starts with the easiest part. Or hardest, in some ways he’d rather not think about. “She’s not my woman,” he manages, holding back a sigh, “and she long since outstripped me as a hunter.”

Paz just grunts at this. Din can hear his armor creaking as he shifts and wonders if he should invite the other man to sit. Since when does Paz wait for invitation to do anything he wanted, though?

“Why would she tell you to come here?” he asks instead.

Paz’s armor creaks some more, and Din guesses that he’s shrugging. “Kriff if I know. Said you could use someone to talk to.”

Din fights back a surge of annoyance. If he wanted to talk to someone—if he was at all ready for that—he has his own ways of reaching out. And he probably wouldn’t call _Paz_ of all people. One of the most orthodox Mandalorians he knows. He’s probably just here to finalize Din’s expulsion.

“Are you here to reclaim the beskar from my armor?” Din asks bitterly, putting these thoughts to voice.

“What?” Paz replies, and he sounds genuinely confused.

Din clenches his teeth and takes a deep breath to try to steady himself, ignoring the sharp pain in his chest as he does so. “I am no longer Mandalorian. No longer worthy of the steel. Surely she told you?”

“She told me that you went knocking on death’s door, and that she removed your helmet to save you. That she was the only one to see your face. Is this not what happened?”  
  
“It is…” Din says cautiously.

“I will return the beskar to the tribe if you wish it, but that is not for me to decide.” Paz is silent for a beat, and then asks, “have you never seen what happens to someone who loses their helmet?”  
  
It takes Din a moment to realize that, amazingly, he never has. Heard stories, yes, had the consequences drilled into him from a young age, but everyone he knew that had been unhelmeted during the Purge had died soon afterward.

“No,” he answers honestly. “Everyone I saw had the luck to die with honor in battle.”

Paz makes a strange sound and it takes Din a minute to realize that he’s _laughing_. Not a lot, not loudly, but it’s there all the same. Din is completely flabbergasted. Paz’s armor creaks again as he settles down onto a chair that Din knows is positioned just on the other side of the curtain.

“Luck,” Paz mutters, barely audible, his voice full of some emotion that Din can’t quite pin down. He’s quiet for a moment, and Din can practically feel him shaking his head. “You know, sometimes I forget that you weren’t born a Mandalorian,” Paz says eventually. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who was as strict an observer of the Way as you. Well, the Armorer, I guess. But that’s priests for you.”

Din finds himself utterly stunned into speechlessness by this statement, and that Paz would be the one to say it is even more unbelievable.

“There’s losing your helmet, and _losing your helmet_ , if you know what I mean,” Paz continues, far more nonchalantly than the topic warrants, at least in Din’s opinion.

“I… don’t…” Din chokes out. No, in fact, he has no idea what Paz means.  
  
“There is a difference between being unhelmeted someone who hates you and being unhelmeted by someone who loves you,” Paz says, incredibly, like he didn’t just shake the foundations of Din’s existence. “You would be the first to lose your helmet to a lover, nor the last. Most people just don’t tell anyone else, though.”

Everything is so overwhelming in this moment that it barely registers that Paz has just referred to Cara as his _lover_. He can’t stop to think about how the other Mandalorian came to this conclusion, about what Cara might have told them about their partnership. Certainly not _that_ , though.

“I can’t believe this,” he says in a rush, finally finding words. “That can’t be true. All I’ve ever heard…”

“Of course people don’t _talk_ about it. No one wants it to seem like it doesn’t matter, because it _does_. More than almost anything. But, and I can’t believe that I have to say this, not more than your life.”

“I’ve seen people throw away their lives after being unhelmeted,” Din argues.

“People who were likely to die in battle anyway,” Paz counters matter-of-factly. “And I told you, losing your helmet to an enemy is different. It is a dishonor that is difficult to live with. Tell me: do you believe Cara did what she did to dishonor you?”

The suggestion hits him like a slap in the face. “Of course not,” he blurts out, without even thinking about it.

“Then why do you treat it as such?”

Din can’t make himself answer that question. What Paz is saying is logical, understandable, and completely unbelievable. The war between these thoughts and the truths he’s always known is growing into a monster of a headache, and between that and the pain nagging in the side of his chest he knows that he’ll lose the battle with fatigue soon enough.

“Have you ever?” he hears himself ask quietly, almost without realizing it. He has no right to ask, he knows, but he can’t help it.

“That is between me and the gods, and no one else,” Paz answers curtly. But then Din hears him sigh, a soft crackle of static over his modulator. “Has it never occured to you that not everyone follows all the rules, all the time? You sin, you repent, you are forgiven. This is the Way,” Paz tells him. “In the strictest interpretation of the Way, by the letter of the law of our tribe, yes, you should return your steel and forgo the helmet. But even that does not make you any less of a Mandalorian. No one can take that from you, once you swear it.”

“This is a lot to think about,” Din says, weariness darkly coloring his tone.

He hears Paz stand again. “I know. But I hope you will consider your options. I’ve told no one about your situation. If you wish, I’ll take your secret to the grave.”

“I couldn’t ask that of you,” Din protests.

“Nonetheless, I am offering,” Paz replies simply. Another impossibility made real. “I doubt I will be able to return, but you know how to contact me.”

“I do,” Din confirms. He looks over at the curtain, imagining he can see the silhouette of the Mandalorian on the other side. “I don’t know how to thank you, Paz.”

“Then don’t. I have done only what anyone would do.” Paz pauses for a moment, then adds, “I was wrong about you, back then. I know that now. All of us owe you a debt.”

Din doesn’t think any of this is true in the slightest. He feels like he’s done more harm than good in the grand scheme of things, even though people keep telling him differently. He has no idea how he got here, to a point where Paz Viszla is advising him to keep the biggest secret of his life and Din _trusts_ _him_ to do so, but he’s here nonetheless. “If you see Cara, will you tell her I’m sorry?”

“Tell her yourself,” Paz says, but his voice is gentle.

Din wants to say he doesn’t know how, doesn’t know where she is or if he’ll ever see her again, but before he can he hears Paz’s footsteps retreating from the room. He is alone again, but this time, for the first time in days, it doesn’t feel so bleak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I need to explain Paz's position here a bit? I wanted a Mandalorian to come talk to Din, and someone he wouldn't normally talk to about these things seemed right. He and Paz part under reasonably good terms after Paz helped him escape with the child, but I wouldn't call them friends. I went back and read the transcripts of the episodes where Paz appears, and I was struck by how all he really cared about was the Empire and whether Din was working for them or not. He's a proud Mandalorian, but we don't know how he feels about the specifics of the Way, really. The only two people who seemed to care so vehemently about the helmet thing were the Armorer and Din himself.
> 
> I also feel like in any society/religion, even one with a strict code, people are going to "sin" and break the rules, and some of them will get away with it by just not telling anyone about it. In a canon that itself is somewhat conflicted by what it means to be a Mandalorian and helmet removal (can they remove them in front of their families? or is Din being completely literal when he says no living creature can ever see his face? is it just his tribe, or a wider swath of people?), I could see members of even an orthodox sect that forbids helmet removal sometimes removing helmets for the "right" reasons and being ok with it. Maybe they need to "confess" their sin and be forgiven, maybe not.
> 
> Does that mean Din is going to be ok with it? No, not at all. We've seen he holds incredibly strictly to his beliefs, and that's certainly not going to change overnight. But there's also something inside him that can't quite give up who he is so easily, which is why he hasn't told anyone else that they can go ahead and look at his face. Obviously once he's healed and is ready to go out into the world he's going to have to make a decision, and that's what's going to be dealt with in the next chapter, in part.
> 
> Finally, as implied by the first chapter, this takes place quite a while after season 1. Din and Cara have just finally destroyed Gideon and the rest of his portion of the Empire, and it is to this that Paz is referring to when he says that they owe Din a debt. 
> 
> Now I need to stop before this endnote gets longer than the chapter. I hope you're enjoying this so far! I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you so much for all your comments, they really mean so much to me. So looking forward to the new trailer, hopefully any day now!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of those chapters where the characters just did what they wanted and took me along for the ride. Enjoy, lol.

Cara doesn’t look up when the Mandalorian sits down heavily in the chair opposite hers. She can see enough of the blue armor to know who it is, and anyway, who else would it be? He stares at her for a long moment and she can feel his gaze burning into the top of her head, like he might be able to read her thoughts. Let him, she thinks; it’s no secret how she’s feeling right now.

“He’s a mess,” Paz says eventually, matter-of-factly.

Cara snorts softly. Is that all he got out of his visit? “I could have told you that.”

“You did,” he points out. Out of the corner of her eye she can see him shift slightly in the seat, like he’s not sure exactly what to say to her. He doesn’t really need to say anything; she hadn’t asked for a report back. “These things… they set you adrift. He’s lost, right now.”  
  
She expected as much, but hearing it hurts more than she thought it would. That she could be the cause of it is unthinkable, and yet here they are. She shoves down the bile rising in her throat and takes a sip of her whiskey. “Can he find his way?”  
  
“No,” Paz answers. Cara winces before she can stop it, even though she knew what the answer would be. “Not on his own. He needs help.”

“You should take him,” Cara suggests. She doesn’t really know why he didn’t in the first place, except maybe Din isn’t well enough to travel yet. Even if Paz can’t help him, surely he knows someone who can.

Paz is silent for a beat and then asks, “where?”

“To the tribe. To Mandalore. I don’t know, wherever he needs to go.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he tells her. “He needs you.”

She looks up at him sharply, trying futily to read something from his posture. He’s not Din, though, not the Mandalorian whose body language she knows better than she knows her own. Paz sits motionless, like a statue.

“I seriously doubt that,” she huffs out with a bitter laugh. “What could I possibly offer him right now?”

“I can’t answer that,” he replies. “But I know he needs you, all the same.”  
  
Cara gives her head a short but vehement shake. “He doesn’t want to see me.”  
  
“He does.”

“Well he shouldn’t, goddammit!” she yells. Her fist hits the table so hard that her glass leaps into the air, whiskey sloshing out over the rim. The cantina goes silent for a moment, but when Cara doesn’t move the conversation picks back up again. “He should hate me,” she grinds out.

“He doesn’t,” Paz answers calmly.

There’s no room for argument in his tone, but she argues anyway. “How do you know?”

“Because he loves you. I can hear it in his voice.”

It is exactly the answer that Cara did not want. She hears the words in her head, filtered through a broken modulator, uttered on a dying breath, and suddenly she can’t seem to breathe. The surge of emotions threatens to choke her, and she tries to wash them away with the remaining whiskey in her glass to no avail. How dare he? How dare he love her after what she did?

“What I did to him was unforgivable,” she manages, cursing how fragile she sounds. Her voice is thick, waivering at the edges.

“It’s not,” he says, unbelievably. “Like I told him—”

Cara cuts him off before he can say anymore. “No. I don’t want to know. I don’t need your absolution.”

“You need someone’s,” he tells her, “and you can’t tell anyone else, so it’s going to have to be mine. You made the right decision.”

“I know that!” she growls at him, grabbing at her whiskey glass and sadly finding it empty. She drops it on the table in disgust and sits back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest. “Doesn’t make it forgivable.”

Paz makes a sound that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. “You are a perfect match,” he mutters under his breath. “Both stubborn as hell.”

Cara does not dignify that with a response. She can hardly see how _she_ is being the stubborn one here.

“The Way isn’t a straight road for anyone, Cara. You only think it is because Din never accepted that it could be anything but.” Paz pauses for a moment, tipping his head slightly. “He knows better now. I think.”

“What are you saying, that what I did means nothing?”

He shakes his head. “No, I’m saying it doesn’t have to mean everything.” With that, Paz pushes back from the table and stands. “Think about it.”

_Think about what?_ she wants to say. What is there for her to consider in this context? He’s already gone, though, deceptively silent for a large man in that much armor. She sighs heavily and drops her head into her arms, folded on the table. She had meant what she told Din: she didn’t regret what she did. But she also wasn’t under any illusions about what it meant for them, especially after his reaction when he woke up.

She’d sought out Paz because it had seemed like the right thing to do, that he might need another Mandalorian to do… whatever it was that needed to be done. She couldn’t say why _Paz_ , precisely, other than Din had always spoken of him as a man of integrity, despite their disagreements. She had honestly thought that when he left that would be the last she ever saw of him, the last connection she would have with Din. Him showing up here and telling her how much Din needed her, that Din still _loved_ her, despite everything… that was not part of the plan.

Of course, that implied there had been a plan at all.

With a louder groan than she intends, Cara pushes her head off the table and snatches up the whiskey glass, desperate for another drink. _Thinking about it_ is decidedly not something she wants to do right now. Possibly ever again, if she can help it.

* * *

She finds herself thinking about it endlessly. What did Paz mean, when he said the Way isn’t a straight road? That what she had done _wasn’t_ unforgivable? Was he lying to her? Just trying to make her feel better? None of it makes any sense.

Paz makes himself incredibly scarce, so she can’t even track him down to ask him. And, like he said, she can’t tell anyone else, so that leaves… Din. She knows he’s still there, still at the hospital even though by this point, a couple of weeks later, he could have walked out. She gets regular updates from the nurses she swore to secrecy, like she has any right to get updates at all. It makes her even more disgusted with herself, that she can’t let go like she should.

It takes her another week before she works up the courage to go back.

The hospital looks the same as when she left, white walls and bright, sunny gardens full of cheery flowers. She wonders if Din has gone to walk in them. The recovery ward he’s housed in is quiet, full of the hushed voices of people speaking to unconcious loved ones and the gentle prodding of nurses. Her heavy boots echo loudly in the hallway, and she can’t help but wonder if Din will recognize the cadence of her steps. She would recognize his anywhere.

The door to his room hangs partly open but she pauses outside anyway. She doesn’t even know if he’s in there; the curtain dividing the room is closed. His armor still sits piled on the table, apparently untouched since she left. The cracked helmet is a brutal reminder of what she’d almost lost, and then what she lost anyway.

“Din?” she says from the hallway. It comes out quieter than she intended, and for a moment she thinks he won’t have heard her, but his response is quick.

“Cara? Is that you?” His voice his rough, like he’d either been using too much or not at all, and she thinks she knows which one it is.

She hesitates a moment and curses herself for it. He deserves better. She doesn’t get to feel hesitant, to feel sorry for herself. “Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

She steps into the room and swings the door around mostly shut behind her. Immediately she wonders if she should have left it open, if he’ll feel too penned in, but she decides to leave it.

“I thought you were coming in,” he says a moment later, as she’s standing there trying to think of what to say.

Cara furrows her brow in confusion. “I did.”

“You might as well come all the way.”

Oh. The curtain. She takes a deep breath to steel herself and steps to the free edge, pulling it back so she can slip behind it. Out of habit she keeps her eyes trained to the ground, until she remembers the last time. Remembers his accusation that she would try to hide his unmasking. She forces herself to look up into his face, a face she never thought she’d actually see.

She’s not sure what she expected to find, but it wasn’t this. A glare, perhaps. Aloofness. Disgust. Not… delight? Relief? Hope? It’s the hope that gets her, that plunges a blade deep in her gut and twists. It’s clear that Din has never learned to hide his emotions from taking over his face, never had to before, and she sees all of them play across his handsome features in quick succession. It feels like she’s reading his mind, learning more than she should. She wants to drop her eyes again, to level the playing field, but she won’t let herself.

All at once she feels sick at running away for so long. She did this, she should have been here to deal with the fallout. Instead she hid, telling herself he wanted it that way, which was plainly not true.

“Paz said you were doing well,” she lies.

She watches in disbelief as the corners of his eyes crinkle into a smile, even if his lips don’t. “No he didn’t,” he retorts with a soft snort. “I’m healing slowly. The nurses think I don’t have anything to live for.”

“That’s not true,” she blurts before she can stop herself. “You have the kid…”  
  
“I have more than the kid.”

The intensity of his gaze, and what it contains, is such that she can’t hold on anymore. Her eyes flit to the side, to the pale light filtering through the gauzy curtain.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” she says softly. And she is, more than she can convey. The intervening weeks seem to have brought him a sense of peace, which he deserves. She does not, however, deserve the forgiveness that she can so clearly see in his eyes.

The silence that stretches between them feels pregnant, like a bubble about to pop. Outside a bird sings distantly and the wind rustles the leaves of the trees. Life goes on, somewhow.

“Cara,” he says eventually. His voice breaks in the middle of her name and she squeezes her eyes shut against the emotion in it. “Please, look at me.”

Her eyes fly open, tears stinging fiercely in the corners. She owes him that, and so much more. She wonders, somewhat wildly, if she’ll ever be able to say no to him again.

“Did Paz say…?” he trails off uncertainly. She doesn’t really know what to tell him. Paz said a lot, not all it things Din might have wanted him to. Din drops his eyes this time, staring into his lap, and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Cara.”

A hysterical bubble of laughter pushes its way out of her throat before she can stop it. Did he really just apologize to _her_? He looks up sharply at her, confused and—oh kriff—hurt, and she lets the incredulity she feels show plainly on her face.

“You are _not_ apologizing to me,” she scoffs.

“Why not?” God help her, he’s actually serious. “I was an asshole.”  
  
Cara gapes at him, and words fail her. “You— you were—” she stammers, “god, Din, you were _entitled_ to it! After what I did to you…”

“I’m alive because of what you did _for_ me,” he corrects patiently. “I spent so long thinking that the only person my life mattered to was me. That a warrior’s death was the best I could hope for. That it wouldn’t matter if I died, because no one would miss me. But that’s not true, is it? I have the kid, now. I have… you.” Din’s voice trembles slightly on the word, like he’s not sure about it. “Or at least, I had you,” he adds in a whisper so faint she barely hears it.

“You still do,” she says, even though she can’t believe she has to.

What he’s giving her now—his patience, his understanding, his absolution—is more devastating than his anger. She feels broken by it, stripped down to her core, utterly ruined in the face of it. A powerful urge overtakes her to yell and scream, to make him fight her, to demand he take it back because _she doesn’t deserve this_. She deserves it less because he apparently spent the past three weeks growing and coming to terms with her betrayal, and she spent it wallowing in guilt and self-pity.

“That’s all I need, then,” he tells her, apparently oblivious to her turmoil.

“What about your way of life? Your creed?” she asks, because she feels like practicalities are something she can hang onto, a raft in the storm.

He smiles at her. Actually honest-to-god _smiles_ at her. “Some things change. Some things stay the same,” he answers cryptically.

Cara has never been more confused. He can’t be implying what she thinks he is, can he? “What did Paz say to you?”

“Did you know,” he says, ignoring her question, “that in some clans, people take off their helmets in front of their families?”

"Is that what he told you?"

"No," he answers. He looks thoughtful. "I've known it for a while. Paz just helped me realize that the Way isn't the same road for all people."

There's that odd metaphor again. She still doesn't understand it. “What are you trying to say?” she demands.

He tips his head at her, and it’s such a familiar gesture that it makes her heart hurt to see what his face has been doing under the helmet all this time. “Isn’t it obvious?”

It is, of course. She’d have to be blind not to see the implication. It’s just, well, she refuses to accept it. She knows better; he’s told her. “Those aren’t the laws of your tribe.”

“They could be the laws of my clan, though.”

Her eyes are drawn to the mudhorn signet welded to Din’s pauldron where it sits on the table. A clan of two, the Armorer had said. It seemed like a lifetime ago. There was her answer, though, right? A clan of _two_. “We’re not family, Din.”

He flinches hard, and she wants to take it back immediately. She won’t, though. It’s the truth, whether he likes it or not.

“Do you really believe that?” he asks. “After all this time?”

“Don’t you?”

“Marry me, Cara.”

The words hit her like a ton of bricks. For a solid minute she’s sure she imagined them, that this couldn’t possibly be happening. Maybe _she_ died on that battlefield, and this is just some hell she’s been stumbling through all this time. Because there’s no universe in which she violates the sacred trust of the man she loves and his response is a marriage proposal.

“You don’t mean that,” she says desperately.

A wave of anger and frustration surges onto Din’s features, fire lighting up his dark brown eyes, and his hands fist the sheets of the bed next to him. It reminds her of that day three weeks ago, when his knuckles had gone so white they’d matched the linens. Time is a circle, and they’re going back to where they started. “Don’t tell me what I mean,” he replies fiercely, practically growling at her. “Don’t you dare. Does what I said mean nothing to you?”

Cara knows he means the proposal, the forgiveness, but she can’t help but hear the words he said before, when he was dying. The ones she’d tried to write off with a joke even then. She looks at him, her vision blurring around the edges with unshed tears, and she can’t fight any longer. “It means everything to me.”

“Then say yes,” he pleads, his fury draining as fast as it had come.

“Ok,” she says. “Yes.”

For a moment he looks shocked, like he expected to have to argue with her more, but the expression is quickly overwhelmed by a look of joy so intense she feels blinded by it. That he’s looking at her like _this_ , and that she can _see_ it on his face, is too much to bear. Tears spill down her cheeks unchecked, and she can’t even be bothered to wipe them away. And then, all at once, he’s yanking the covers off the bed and trying to push himself to his feet, clearly still weak, and her feet finally unfreeze from where they’d felt stuck to the ground. She rushes forward, grabbing his shoulder and his waist without thinking.

“What are you doing?” she asks sharply, trying to ease him back into the bed. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”  
  
He’s stronger than she expected, and her grip is too gentle to stop him. “I’m fine,” he huffs in frustration. “I’ve barely stood in weeks, but now… now I have something to get up for.”

It wasn’t a particularly fast operation, this getting up, but it all seems very sudden to Cara to have him standing in front of her. She’d seen him without his armor before, around the ship, but he’d never seemed so small and fragile then. Maybe it’s the fact that three weeks in a hospital bed have left him thinner than normal, muscles atrophied from disuse, but she can’t help but think that it’s at least partly to do the helmet. His face is more vulnerable than she ever could have expected, his large eyes full of unguarded affection. It makes her want to wrap her arms around him and protect him, never let any harm come to him again, as if he weren’t one of the fiercest warriors in the galaxy.

She doesn’t say this, of course; she knows exactly what he’d think of the idea that he needs protection. But he does, just as she does, even if she doesn’t care to admit it. When they’re together they can be the versions of themselves that need protection, without fear or shame, knowing that the other will be there. It’s what they do, what they have done, what they will do the rest of their lives.

“I love you, Cara,” he says, finally. The words are soft, sweet, nothing like the choked-out confession of a dying man that has tormented her for weeks. He reaches up to cup her cheek, swiping a thumb through the drying tears still streaking her skin. “I will always love you, no matter what.”

Abruptly she knows that she was wrong: he is the strong one, in this moment, despite the weakness of his body. He is the one protecting her when she feels like she she might break apart from all the emotions warring amongst each other inside her, and he is there holding her together with a gentle touch. She feels herself drowning in the dark, chocolate pools of his eyes, but instead of panic all she knows is peace.

“I love you too, Din,” she manages, her voice more solid than she expected. She still has him by the shoulder, and now she pulls him forward as she leans in, bringing their foreheads together. “Always.”

He tips his head, dipping slightly to bring his face up under hers, and his lips brush her own. Tenderly, almost hesitantly, as if the kiss hadn’t been preceded by a marriage proposal and something like vows. She would laugh at the absurdity of it all—they really did all of this completely backwards, didn’t they—but she’s siezed by a desperate need sparking low in her gut. She chases after his lips, hand sliding up to curl behind his neck and pull him closer, closer, knowing it will never be close enough.

Din responds in kind to her enthusiasm, slipping one hand around her waist to splay across her lower back and press their bodies together, and the low spark of need is fanned into a flaming inferno. He takes a stumbling step backward until he hits the bed, pulling her along with him. She has one knee up on the mattress, half straddling him, when a gasp of pleasure turns into a hacking coughing fit and he doubles over with a hand clutching the side of his chest.

“Din?” a nurses voice calls into the room. “Are you all right?”

Cara steps back, though not far, just as the nurse pulls back the curtain. Her eyes are cast to the ground but she can obviously see a second pair of legs near Din’s where he’s still leaning against the edge of the bed. She stops short, just keeping herself from looking up at them.

“Oh! I didn’t know…” she starts.

“I’m fine,” he croaks out, cutting her off. He pushes himself back onto the bed, settling against the mound of pillows. His eyes are screwed shut in pain, and it makes Cara wonder how much the nurses haven’t known about because he hasn’t told them. Oh, she should have been here, she thinks miserably.

“It sounds like your lung needs to drain,” the nurse tells him as she bustles over, frowning.

She pulls open a drawer next to the bed and withdraws a large syringe with long, wicked-looking needle on the end of it. Tutting disapprovingly at him, she removes his hand from where it clutches his chest and pulls up the edge of his shirt, palpates a few ribs, then carefully slides the needle between them. After a moment she pulls back on the plunger and the syringe fills slowly with a pink-tinged translucent fluid. Din’s heaving breaths slow down.

“Is he—” Cara starts, choking on the words. “Will he be ok?”

“He’ll be fine,” the nurse tells her. “It’s just part of healing. That much trauma to the lung, it takes a while.” She continues drawing until the syringe is full, then carefully withdraws it and presses a small patch of gauze to the puncture. “You’re her, aren’t you? The one that brought him.”

“Yes,” Cara answers.

“Weren’t sure if you were coming back.” There’s no judgement in the woman’s voice, just a straightforward matter-of-factness, but it stings all the same.

“I’m here now,” Cara says quietly, as much to Din as to the nurse.

The nurse disposes of the syringe and wipes at the small puncture it left, which already has stopped bleeding. “Good,” she says in that same practical tone. “He could use a friend.”

Cara can’t stop from wincing at that, even though she can see Din looking at her reproachfully. _Not your fault_ , she can practically hear him saying. She sends her best _Of course it is_ glare back at him.

“If he starts doing that again and no one’s around, ring us,” the nurse tells Cara, utterly oblivious to their silent discussion. She heads toward the edge of the curtain and pauses before she ducks behind it. “And he should avoid, ah, _exertion_.”

The woman’s footsteps are still echoing down the hall when Cara dissolves into a fit of giggles at Din’s mortified expression. “What did you tell them about me?”  
  
“Nothing!” he protests indignantly.

Cara hums her disbelief at that, smiling at him. The tips of his ears are bright red, and she can’t help but step forward to press a soft kiss to the side of his head. She finds his hand where it sits next to him on the bed and weaves their fingers together, squeezing gently. “You should probably get some rest.”  
  
He catches her hand before she can withdraw it, tugging on her wrist with his free hand. “Stay? Please?”

As if she could say no to him. “Of course,” she murmurs.

With that promise, he lets her slip out of his grasp and she bends to unlace her boots, kicking them off as she peels off her armor and leaves it on the ground nearby. Din has scooted over to make room in the narrow bed and while it’s not much, she will absolutely squeeze in there and be happy about it. She climbs in with him, fitting her body against his side and throwing a protective arm over his waist.

He’s asleep faster than she expected, slightly labored breaths evening out as he drifts off. She hasn’t slept well the past few weeks but somehow she’s still not really tired; her mind is too busy racing, thinking about everything that just happened, and she can’t fight the absurd thought that if she falls asleep she’ll wake up and find out it was all a dream. She lets herself cling to him unashamedly. And anyway, from here she can listen to his heart beating, a grounding reminder of what she almost lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is still more healing to be done, but at least we're on the right track, eh? One more chapter to go! Thank you all once again for your comments. I've been in a bit of an inspiration slump lately and they definitely help keep me writing!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I'm alive! And I finally finished this story. This chapter is reasonably short, more of an epilogue, but wraps some things up I thought were important.

They say the vows a few days later, deep in the flower gardens, away from prying eyes. Cara had been surprised when he told her about the simplicity of the ceremony, but she’d also looked a bit relieved. When pressed, she had just said that it sounded a lot more appealing to her than the spectacle of traditional Alderaanian weddings.

“Always figured I’d elope, if I met someone,” she’d admitted. “Not that it was going to be an issue after… well, you know. I just always thought, why do other people need to be involved?”

“Well, for Mandalorians, they don’t,” he’d answered.  
  
Cara had smiled at that. “Good.”

Din never thought he’d get married. It was simply nothing he’d ever considered before, not even idly, never thought he’d meet anyone he’d feel this way about. Even so, he would have expected that if he ever did say the vows, he’d be doing it in his armor, and certainly he wouldn’t be helmetless.

Somehow, it still feels perfectly right.

That morning Cara disappears beyond the curtain, saying she has to get ready. He can’t really fathom what this means until she reappears more than an hour later, her hair braided up into an elaborate, crown-like design. It’s the only thing that’s different—she’s still wearing her green pants and the plain black shirt that goes under her armor—but it takes his breath away nonetheless.

“You braided your hair differently,” he says stupidly, too overwhelmed by how beautiful she looks to come up with anything more profound.

She grins at him and turns in a circle so he can appreciate the back. Really, he has no idea how she did that alone. “Well, I’m about to be married. Can’t do that without the proper braid.”

“You look amazing.”

“I look absurd,” she scoffs. “But that’s ok. You get to be absurd on your wedding day. C’mon, the coast is clear. I told the nurses to keep everyone out of the garden for few hours.”

They don’t need a few hours. The ceremony takes all of five minutes to say the four lines, and that’s only because they say them in both Mando’a and Basic, and he says the words slowly for her to repeat. But they sit in the sunshine for a long time after, taking in the beauty of the gardens.

The sun is dipping below the trees when they finally make their way back inside. He’s utterly exhausted by the exertion of the day, even though he’d just been sitting for almost the whole time. Cara helps him into bed and lets down part of her braid, but not all of it.

“It’s going to take a bit to get used to braiding it differently,” she says in response to his questioning look. “Does it suit me?”

“I can’t imagine anything that wouldn’t suit you,” he replies honestly.

Cara _tsks_ at him, frowning playfully. “You’re biased.”

“Does it matter if I am?”

She laughs, light and airy, before climbing carefully into the narrow bed next to him. “No, I suppose not.”

* * *

They’re both sitting at the small table in Din’s room playing a half-hearted game of sabaac when they hear heavy footsteps in the hall outside. A brief, confused look passes between them—it’s certainly not one of the nurses, and he’s hardly expecting any visitors—before Cara pushes herself away from the table and slips past the curtain to see who it is.

“Paz?” she says, clearly as surprised as he is. “What are you doing here?”

Din hears the creak of armor as Paz shifts slightly. “Came to see how he was doing,” he answers. “And to bring him something. Is he awake?”

“I am,” Din says from his seat behind the curtain.

Paz takes a couple of steps closer. “The nurses say you are recovering well.”

“Yeah,” Din admits. “I’m doing better.”

Until recently, Din would never have put much stock in the idea that your mental state greatly affects your physical healing, but the connection has now become painfully obvious to him. Cara’s only been back a few days, and he’s improved more in that time than he did over weeks at the beginning. Maybe it’s just that his body has finally gotten over the last hurdle, but… maybe not. When he’s feeling particularly sappy, he thinks it seems like he’s gotten back a part of him that’s been missing, the final piece that’s made it possible for his tissues to knit themselves back together.

“Good,” Paz says simply. “Have you thought about what I said?”

“I have.”

“Should I leave you two…?” Cara breaks in.

Din can’t quite hold back a smile at the image of her standing awkwardly near Paz while they converse across the curtain. “No,” Din says. “You’re part of this clan now. I have no secrets from you.”  
  
Paz makes a grunt of approval, like this has answered any possible questions he might have had. Maybe it has. “You’re ready, then.”

“For…?” Din prompts.

There’s a brief rustling sound, and then he hears a sharp intake of breath from Cara. “Here,” Paz says, “take it to him.”

The suspense is practically killing him. It can’t be more than a few seconds but time seems to stretch out before the curtain moves again and Cara reappears holding… a helmet. Unpainted, like his old one, but with a slight variation in the sculpting of the cheeks and the ornamentation of the crown. The upper edge of the vizor dips into a shallow ‘V’ in the middle, and a low, curved ridge arcs up the forehead. The barest suggestion of a mudhorn, but unmistakable nonetheless.

Din immediately knows exactly what this is, and the implication shocks the breath out of his lungs. He stares, wide-eyed and speechless, as she steps forward and presses the new helmet into his hands. He lets his fingers trail over the ridges and valleys, losing himself as he gazes into the vizor.

“Din, what…?” Cara asks, sounding utterly lost.

He can’t quite form words yet, so Paz does it for him. “Sometimes, to move forward, you have to let the past die. You have not been able to bring yourself to wear your original helmet again?”  
  
“No,” Din chokes out, unable to pull his gaze away from the helmet.

“It is as I suspected. The Mandalorian who wore your helmet died that day on the battlefield. Today, you are born again. This is the Way.”

“This is the Way,” Din echoes automatically. He’d never considered this possibility to his conundrum, but he has to admit the solution is an elegant one. He knew he would never going to be comfortable wearing the helmet that he’d been unmasked in, would always feel like a liar and a fraud. But this one… “This is a lot of beskar,” he says uncertainly. “It will take me a long time to repay you.”  
  
“It is a gift,” Paz argues. “As I said before, we owe you a heavy debt for destroying the one responsible for the Purge. I commissioned it from an armorer on Mandalore. Told him your old one was damaged beyond repair in the battle. He would not take payment.”

It’s not strictly true—Din’s old helmet certainly could be repaired, in the right hands—and he’s not sure this is a fair trade, but he knows he won’t get far arguing with Paz. “Thank you,” he says, instead.

“What will happen to the old helmet?” Cara asks.

“The beskar must be returned to the tribe,” Paz answers. “When you are well enough to travel to Nevarro.”

Din nods faintly, still staring at the helmet cradled in his lap. “This is the Way.”

* * *

That day comes sooner than he expected. To tell the truth, he doesn’t really feel ready, but the nurses say he is plenty healed and anyway they need the bed space. With Cara’s help he’d started working out again, trying to build up muscle and stamina, but he still gets tired easily. He’s not entirely sure he’ll be able to wear his armor for long periods of time. Even so, he wants to wear it out of the hospital. _Needs_ to wear it out. Needs to depart as his new self, with a new helmet and a _riduur_.

It takes a lot longer than usual to put on his armor, even with Cara’s assistance, and the padded base layer hangs loosely over his shrunken frame. When they get all the pieces on, he feels not unlike a kid playing dress-up. He knows that the strength and the weight will return eventually, but in the moment it’s more than a little disheartening. He also knows, without a doubt, that he would have never been able to bear it without Cara by his side.

Finally, all that’s left is the new helmet. He hasn’t actually put it on yet; even though he regularly wore his old helmet without the rest of his armor, it felt wrong to put this one on without it, at least the first time. He picks it up off the table, holding it in two hands, and stares for a long moment into the vizor.

“Are you ok?” Cara asks gently, hovering nearby. He can hear the worry in her voice. It is a big moment after all.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m good.”

To back up this assertion, he lifts the helmet and places it on his head, tapping the side once to pair it with the rest of his armor. The first thing he notices is that it smells weird: new, clean, like beskar and oil and fresh leather padding. It makes sense, it is a brand new helmet, but he had the old one for so many years he never thought about how much it smelled like _him_ in the inside. The heads-up displays are slightly different, too, an upgraded system from his old one.

“Well?” he prompts, watching Cara scruitnize him. “What do you think?”  
  
She bites her lower lip tentatively. “It’s a little weird, if I’m honest,” she admits. “I just spent so much time looking at the old one. I’ll get used to it, though. It’s a good look.”

“Think the kid will recognize me?”  
  
“Of course he will,” she says confidently. “He’ll know his dad anywhere.”

Din’s not so sure; he looks into the mirror hanging on the opposite wall and barely recognizes himself. But they’ll find out soon enough. After they visit Nevarro, they’ll head to the Jedi school to see him. It’s been far too long since his last visit.

Only one piece of armor remains on the table now: his old helmet. Din picks it up, turning the cracked form over in his hands. He thinks about what Paz said, about how the Mandalorian who wore that helmet died on the battlefield that day. At one point, it might have been true, if this had happened to him years before. He might have remade himself into a different person, left everything behind and begun anew.

Now, though, he can’t just walk away from that old life. Cara, the kid, every sin, and every redemption: they’re all worked so deeply into the core of his being that if he tried to extract them he’d be left with a unstable, brittle structure, destined to fail under the smallest of stresses. But with them…

He looks up into the mirror again and sees the mudhorn on his pauldron, the stylized horn on his new helmet. No, the Mandalorian who wore his old helmet didn’t die that day. He was reforged, shaped like raw beskar over a framework of reinforcements that made him stronger than he ever was before. His family. His clan. His people.

“You ready?” Cara asks, standing by his side.

“Yes,” he answers, and for the first time since he woke up in this hospital, he knows it is completely true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there you go! This story got heavier than I originally intended, but I'm glad I figured out a way to end on a hopefully uplifting note. I'm looking forward to meeting more Mandalorians in S2 and getting some more information about what happened in the purge and how the tribe (at least) ended up with such strict helmet laws. Less than a month away now!
> 
> Thank you all so much for your kudos and comments once again, and thanks for keeping our little fandom trucking during the slow times. Love you all!


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